A two-month delay in the state’s Tag & Tax Together program has some county tax offices up in arms.

“We’ve been working on it like a bunch of dogs since November,” Greene County Tax Administrator Becky Sutton said.

The program, which will have the N.C. Department of Revenue billing customers directly, was set into law in 2005 and has been extended three times, Marge Howell, DMV communications officer, said.

“It began,” she said, “… to allow counties to collect their vehicle taxes in a timely manner.”

The counties who have worked to upgrade their software and prepare the July bills to send to the Department of Revenue now have to perform the billing again using the old billing method.

Jones County Tax Administrator Wayne Vanderford said his staff now, figuratively, has to “throw it out the window.”

“I had to hire more people to do this,” he said. “… All those files we were doing for five months, we found out we’ve got to throw them out.”

Lenoir County Tax Administrator Darrell Parrish said the process created additional work, but it did give his staff a chance to learn the process.

“It’s unfortunate it was delayed, in my opinion,” he said.

The state’s 100 counties were told to have the July bills ready by May. Lenoir, Greene and Jones counties finished up by Friday, but at about 4:30 p.m., all the counties received an email thanking them for their hard work and telling them the program would be delayed until September because the software vendors were not ready.

“There are more than 600 dealers in North Carolina who use vendors for online services to title and register vehicles,” wrote David B. Baker, director of the Local Government Commission, in the email. “… To provide these important business partners and their software vendors additional time to test and certify their online services for vehicle dealers, we will implement the new Tax and Tag Together program beginning with the September renewals.”

The state’s computer system is expected to go live on July 1 as required by the state, but the combined tax and tags won’t be implemented until the September tag renewals are due.

Howell said the vendors supply the software for the 600 new car dealerships that use the online system.

“It enables them to register and title vehicles online,” she said.

What the Tag & Tax program will mean for state residents is they will have to pay their vehicle property tax at the same time they purchase a new vehicle or register one or their cars won’t be registered.

Howell said there is a provision that will allow new vehicle purchasers to obtain a 60-day temporary tag and pay the property tax by the end of the 60-day period.

Residents renewing their tags can get their state inspection up to 60 days prior to registering their car, she said, adding these options spread the costs out over a longer period of time.

The new bills will reflect both vehicle property tax information from counties and other taxing jurisdictions, as well as vehicle registration and inspection information. Both tag renewals and tax payments will come in one bill and must be paid in full to renew vehicle registration.

Wynn Odom of Wynn Odom Ford said he wasn’t clear on all the factors involved in accessing the customers’ property tax for new vehicles, or on what method the tax would be based. He was also concerned the customer would be paying sales tax and interest on the tax if the property tax is rolled into a loan.

“There’s a whole lot of complexity to it,” Odom said about the program.

He was also concerned about handling out-of-state sales. Howell said the dealerships would only be responsible for the taxes of vehicles at the situs address, or legal residence, of North Carolina.

Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.

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For information about the Tax & Tags Together program, visit ncdot.gov/dmv. Information for new car dealerships can be found at ncdot.gov/dmv/vehicle and click on the second Connect NCDOT to the right.